Letters to the editor, Jan. 3

San Francisco Chronicle

January 2, 2017

The new state laws for 2017 (“Put down that phone now,” Editorial, Jan. 1) range from significant (outlawing the purchase of semiautomatic rifles with “bullet buttons”) to strange (allowing beauty salons and barber shops to serve wine and beer for free before 10 p.m.). And while it’s heartening to learn that California’s minimum wage will now rise to $10.50 per hour, our state trails Washington, D.C., of all places, by one dollar per hour in this category.

Still, the fact that our state is now taking important steps toward achieving sensible gun control, protecting the rights of LGBTQ citizens, ensuring gender pay equality and helping the homeless makes me glad to call California home in this new year.

Felicia Charles, Millbrae

Short, sweet, cheap

President-elect Donald Trump should just tweet his inaugural address and save the country the estimated $100 million cost of security on Jan. 20 in Washington.

Ellen Rony, Tiburon

Commerce disrupted

I am the president of the San Francisco Council of District Merchants Associations, representing more than 20 merchant associations. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is changing our streets, avenues and boulevards to expressways meant to deliver passengers rapidly to their destinations.

This is accomplished by removing stops, eliminating parking and left turns and supposedly the red lanes, which from the West Portal tunnel to the ocean there is a reduction of around four minutes. There is no consideration for small businesses that are negatively impacted with these changes.

These changes encourage people not to shop but arrive at their destinations ASAP. Areas affected by these changes include Taraval, West Portal, Mission Street, Union Street, Geary Boulevard and Polk Street. Small-business owners understand the need for good public transit, but that can be achieved by more frequent buses, and surely could not our resident billion-dollar companies invest in subway systems?

Henry Karnilowicz, San Francisco

‘Manchurian Candidate’

The 1960s espionage thriller “The Manchurian Candidate” detailed a covert communist plot to take over the U.S. presidency. Unfolding events in 2016 seem to reprise that covert scheme.

President-elect Donald Trump, some of his associates and potential Cabinet nominees unwittingly, by arrogance or naivete, are serving the agenda of the Russian Republic and its despotic president, Vladimir Putin. Trump ignores, denigrates and scoffs at information supplied by our country’s security and intelligence agencies about the extent of the threat to our democracy.

Putin is playing Trump like a drum, and the world is wondering what is up with our country. We need to wake up and recognize that a version of the Manchurian Candidate is alive and well in the United States.

Gene Johnson, Oakland

The real blame

Friday’s editorial page cartoon by Darrin Bell (on blame for Donald Trump’s election) was not only tasteless and insulting to the majority of your readers, who happen to have voted for Hillary Clinton, but it glaringly left out the obviously most egregious reason for the Trump fiasco: the Electoral College. Personally, I am sick and tired of the press and pundits acting like Clinton didn’t get support from millions more Americans than Trump.

Editorial Page Editor John Diaz: Where’s that journalistic outrage you editorialized about recently?

Jeremy Snitkin, Novato

No great mystery

Understanding that Russia’s only commodities are oil and arms, it is frustrating that the media find President-elect Donald Trump’s devotion to Vladimir Putin and his Cabinet choices baffling. Here’s a tip (from the Donald): Follow the money!